THE, CITY W' AS IN TOT AL DARKNESS D lJTCHER stood at his favorite Hollywood bar, feeling clean after his shower and still thirsty, looking at the girls, glad that he was alone, listening with one ear to the conversation around him. "The British and French," a man in a hound's-tooth- check jacket was saying, "will shuttle back and forth over Germany from Paris to Warsaw. And besides, he has no oil. Everybody knows Hitler has no oi1." "' D 1 0 , h " 1 ar lng, s e says to me, a arge blonde woman said loudly to anoth- er large blonde woman, "'darling, I haven't seen you in forever. \Vhere've you been-in the summer theatre?' She knows god-damn well I just finished two pictures for Fox! " "It's a bluff," the man in the hound's- tooth check said. "He's going to back down, Russia or no Russia. He has no oil. \Vhere are you today without oil?" "1\;lr. Dutcher." The barman brought over a phone and plugged it in. " F " or you. It was Machamer on the phone. "\Vhat're you doing tonight, Ralph?" 1\;lachamer asked, his voice, as always, grating and noisy. "I'm drinking tonight," Dutcher said. "I'm drinking and waiting for something good to happen to me." eel' x T , 0 M 0 " M h \i V e re gOIng to eXlCo, ac a- mer said. "\Vant to come along?)) "'Vho's we?" "Dolly and me. Want to come along? " "'Vhat part of Mexico " Dutcher asked. "\\That distant part of that ver- dant land? V eracruz, Mexico City-" Machamer laughed. "Tia Juana. I got to be back on Tuesday to look for a job. Just overnight. For the races. \Vant to go?" "l\Tithout oil," the man in the check was saying, "a war is absolutely imprac- tical." Dutcher looked gravely at him, considering whether or not he wanted to go to Mexico. He had avoided peo- ple after playing tennis in the afternoon, because he'd wanted to be alone, by him- self, with the decks clear for something special and significant to happen to him on this special and significant weekend. "Have they got bullfights in Tia Juana?" he asked Machamer. "Maybe," Machamer said. "They have them sometimes. Come on. This is Labor Day. There's nobody in Holly- wood. " " I ' 0 d " D h O d " I ' b m tIre, utc er sal. ve een listening to the radio for seven nights and I played tennis and I'm thirsty." "You can lie down in the back of the car, with a bottle," Machamer said. Machamer was a young writer and very impressed by Dutcher's two novels, and constantly was after him. "I'll drive." "I never saw a bullfight," Dutcher O d " D o d h "I" sal. 1 you ever see one t ere r "Oh, nuts!" Machamer said. "Dolly and I'll be over in fifteen minutes to pick you up." "Tonight," Dutcher said, "I would like to have a startling adventure." "Oh, nuts!" Machamer said. "Fif- o " teen mInutes. Dutcher put the phone back on its pedestal. "I've got to find another bar," he said to the barman. ",^Thenever peo- ple want to find me, they call me here. It's bad for the reputation. In two years nobody'll give me a job." The barman grinned. "Another rum Collins," Dutch- er said, looking steadfastly at a slender girl down the bar who had long, thick black hair and tremendous, full breasts that jutted out like pennants in front of her. The barman looked too. "Doesn't it break your heart?" he said. " c 1 0 f ." I) h O d " s 0 1 a 1 ornla, utc er sal. pecla - ty of the coun try." "That cameraman," one of the blonde ladies was saying, "he made me look like \Villiam So Hart's mother. I told him, too, but loud!" In Poland now, Dutcher thought, the tanks were roaring over the dusty plainso German boys were climbing into bomb- ers, fiddling with the controls, peering at the instruments, thinking, in this one minute when they were waiting and there was nothing to do, "Is this the last time?" and then getting the signal and sweeping off the field toward 'Var- saw. Cavalry, Dutcher re- membered-the Poles had wonderful cavalry. He could just see a wonderful Polish cavalryman sitting heavily on his plodding mount, retreating, sleepless, from the border, stinking from the horse, listen- ing to the bombers overhead, thinking of sleep and home and the English Air Force, kicking his horse wearily, saying "Son of a bitch." And the rich and their women, like the rich and their women everywhere, leaving quietly out the back way, while the dawn broke and the light came up and the boy in the bomber could get a good, clear view of the cavalry- man on the long, open road below. Dutcher looked at the girl with breasts like pennantso He sat at the bar, 13 making believe he was staring blankly ahead, making believe nothing was hap- pening inside him, feeling lust rise with- in him as definitely as water rising in a filling glass. General, non-particular lust, he thought, looking at the girl- pretty, with her black hair and long throat and bright print dress and that amazing bosom. I ought to be ashamed, Dutcher thought. The reader of SpI- noza, the admirer of John Milton, the ad vocate of moral and economic reforms -a sufferer from general and indis- criminate lust ten times daily at the sight of a face, a ruffle, at the sound of a woman's laugho "\\1 e live on two planes," Dutcher said to the bartender. The bartender smiled weakly. Hollywood, Dutcher thought, Holly- wood had a great deal to do with it. It was the product of the neighborhood, and everywhere you went it was pushed in your face like cheese in Wisconsin, and you tried to keep yourself from thinking about "Murder at Midnight" and sex rushed in to fi11 the vacuum. "1\;1 urder at 1\;lidnight" was the picture he was writing. It had a long, com- plicated story about a night-club singer who got drunks to spend money on her but who was genuine-all the way through, as everyone always said in the conferences. She had a small son, from whom she bravely tried to conceal the tawdriness of her profession, and she got mixed up in a n1urder and she fled town in the rain with the son and the cops picked up an innocent man. . . . Dutch- er shook his head. He never could get the story straight. i\.nyway, this was the weekend. And he'd be through in two weeks and have enough money for eight months in N ew York. 'Thy'm I kidding myself, he thought. I look at them in N ew York, too. Hollywood. You could always blame everything on Hollywood. That was the nicest thing about Holly- wood. "Sacred and profane," he told the bartender. "That's the whole explana- ti 0 n " M ACHAMER came in with Dolly. "On to Mexico," Machamer said. " S O d " D h O d " d o It own, utc er saI, an gIve me some good arguments. Dolly, you look beautiful." Dolly looked as thin and as plain and nervous as ever, and Dutcher was always very careful, in this city of magnificent women, to be gallant and flattering to her. "Give me Dolly,"